Well, then, Nina thought.

For a moment they looked at each other, then the major sighed, folding her hands on her desk. “Even a good Soviet citizen feels fear at the prospect of an arrest,” she said, more conversational. “But a good Soviet citizen would know to bow to the will of the sentence, join in denouncing her father, and thus have a chance at saving herself.”

“For what?” Nina asked. Instead of a bullet, getting ten or twenty years in a labor camp near Norilsk or Kolyma?

Bershanskaia switched tack. “We have been lucky to have sterling records among the regiment. If any of my pilots transgressed, I would not be able to speak for them.” She didn’t flinch from Nina’s gaze. “Though it would grieve me.”

Nina jerked a nod. The regiment came first. For any officer, it had to. Bershanskaia already had to be sick with worry over the regiment’s future. Since the very beginning, the ladies of the Forty-Sixth had to justify their existence with every bombing run, had to be perfect—and now they had a rotten apple in their midst, the tainted daughter of an enemy of the state. What would it mean for the regiment? They no longer had Marina Raskova to speak for them as Comrade Stalin’s favorite aviatrix. Nina nodded again without bitterness. Bershanskaia couldn’t speak for her, not one word.

“Acquittal, of course, is entirely possible. You are not wrong that a sterling record of service will weigh in favor.”

It doesn’t matter, Nina thought. Even acquitted, she would never return to the Forty-Sixth—she’d be tainted by association with treason. She was finished here. She’d never fly again with Galya at her back; she’d never sip oily tea in the cockpit between runs; she’d never line up a target behind Yelena and the Rusalka . . .

That was when the agony hit her in the gut as though she’d been stabbed by an icicle. Yelena. What would she do when the van came for Nina? When would it come? It must be soon, if Bershanskaia had sniffed out advance notice of the arrest. It was always in the small hours of the night that enemies of the state were dealt with—the noise of the car stopping, the officious rap on a door. Yelena and the Night Witches would be halfway through a night’s bombing runs at the time Nina was taken away with a guard on each side.

Dimly, she wondered how this was happening. How a day beginning with vodka and laughter and kisses in a pink dawn had come to this evasive recitation of horror and condemnation.

“For the regiment,” Bershanskaia was saying in guarded tones, “things must happen . . . quietly. There mustn’t be trouble.”

The words triggered Nina in pure reflex. She felt her every muscle snap taut, felt the individual hairs on her head like hot wires. Her teeth locked down a feral hiss before it could escape. She remembered Comrade Stalin’s Not one step back. The weight of her father’s razor sat just inside her sleeve—a flick of the wrist would drop it into her hand. She didn’t know what Bershanskaia saw on her face, but the major stiffened.

Nina forced the words out through the gate of her teeth. “I’m no good at quiet, Comrade Major.”

But you are good at trouble, her father whispered in poisonous amusement, evidently deciding to speak up again. You’re a Markov. Trouble always finds us, but we eat trouble alive. Nina was not going to sit meekly in lockup, grounded from flying, until her accusers arrived to take her away. The moment a thug in a blue cap came to take her by the arm, came to take her east, the razor would drop into her hand and she would paint the room red. They’d get her in the end—unlike her father she had nowhere to run—but it wasn’t going to be easy, it wasn’t going to be clean, it wasn’t going to be quiet. Bershanskaia saw that very clearly; she exhaled behind her desk.

Nina stood there shaking, fury copper-bright in her mouth. So, she thought. Haven’t changed much, have you? All the warmth and camaraderie of the Forty-Sixth, all the softening of Yelena’s love . . . it still hadn’t taken very much for Markov’s daughter to come out, the rusalka bitch born in lake water and madness. Not very much at all.

Her knees gave out and she sat down abruptly in the chair before Bershanskaia’s desk. Looking at the clock on the wall she was astounded to see it was late afternoon. Briefing would begin soon for the night’s mission.

She exhaled a shaky breath. “This has been a very informative discussion, Comrade Major. I understand you have been interviewing all your pilots, to urge constant vigilance against saboteurs and enemies of the state.”

“Of course.” Bershanskaia’s voice was cautious. “All of you.”

“My navigator is having dizzy spells,” Nina said. “Comrade Lieutenant Zelenko is unwell and would benefit from a night’s rest.” Nina raised her chin, looked Bershanskaia in the eyes. “As a former navigator, I am more than capable of flying tonight’s runs alone.”

Silence expanded around the words. Nina’s mouth dried out, and suddenly her pulse was fluttering.

“You may fly alone tonight, Comrade Lieutenant Markova. Inform your navigator to report to the infirmary.”

“Thank you, Comrade Major Bershanskaia,” Nina said through numb lips. Saluted, for the last time.

Gravely, slowly, Bershanskaia saluted her back.

And Nina took her leave.

THE WORD HAD already spread.

No one approached Nina as she left Bershanskaia’s office on feet that did not quite feel the Polish mud. Everyone watched in grave silence, eyes speaking volumes as she passed. No one reached out, no one spoke—until she came into the derelict barn that served as a barracks, and Yelena rose from Nina’s cot with swollen eyes.

“Oh, Ninochka—”

The violent pressure of those strong arms nearly broke Nina in half. She sagged in Yelena’s grip, gulping unsteadily as Yelena stroked her hair.

“The word already came out that Galya’s grounded.” Yelena clearly knew what that meant; her voice was filled with dread. “You’re—you’re going up alone?”

Nina nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Don’t,” Yelena whispered. “Fight the charges. It’s all a mistake. They won’t condemn a Hero of the Soviet Union! If you appeal—”

Of course Yelena with her shining belief in the system would think acquittal a simple matter of innocence. Nina just shook her head. “No.”

“Why won’t you—”

“I’m going up tonight, Yelenushka.” Her six hundred sixteenth bombing run, Nina thought. Her last.

Yelena pulled away, eyes filled with tears. “Don’t crash,” she begged. “Don’t throw your plane into those Fritz guns. Don’t make me watch flames coming up from your wreckage—”

“I’m not going to crash,” Nina said thickly.

She freed herself from Yelena’s arms. No time to waste: forcing the chaos of her thoughts aside, she rummaged under the cot for her meager stash of possessions. A pilot at war needed so little—a pistol, a sack of emergency supplies in case of crashing. An old white scarf embroidered with blue stars . . . Nina stuffed everything into a knapsack, ransacking the barracks for all the food she could find. In Bershanskaia’s office she’d been too stunned to form a plan; her thoughts stretched no further than the offer to fly alone. Get off the ground, that was all her instincts had told her—get into the sky before the shackles came.

Now what?

Despite herself, she envisioned aiming for a battery of antiaircraft guns, the white flare of the searchlight filling her world like a sun as she dived into it for once rather than away. The image crooned. Better to go, in fire and glory, to sleep.

I’m so tired.

But Nina pushed that vision away. She looked at Yelena, standing in her flying overalls trying not to weep, and opened her mouth. But she thought who might be listening and put a finger to her lips in warning. Shouldering her knapsack, Nina grabbed Yelena’s arm and marched her wordlessly out, across the trampled field to the middle of the runway. The dying afternoon sun beat down, insects droned, and there was no one within fifty meters to hear anything they had to say to each other.

“I’m not going to crash my plane.” Nina swung around at last, facing Yelena. “I’m going to run. I’m flying west.”

The uncurling quiver of fierce affirmation inside her stomach was all she needed. West, not east. The dream of the girl growing up by the Old Man.